Abstract

The paper presents the engineering and fabrication of the “Off The Cuff” pavilion designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro for the exhibition “A Matter of Perception: LINKING MINDS” organised by DAMNº and Mosca Partners at Palazzo Litta for the FuoriSalone2017.

The roof canopy is composed of 300 pairs of jeans. DS+R deploys the jeans as ready-mades, intentionally misusing and translating them from the context of the human body into an architectural module.

The design exploits the implicit structural logic of the jeans connecting them waist-to-waist and cuff-to-cuff to create a tensile, catenary diagrid that spans the open space of the courtyard. The net gives the impression of a body imprinted in space, but one also defamiliarised by repetition.

As an architectural figure, the net springs across the courtyard, describing a collective ethos; as a series of modular parts, the jeans point to the individual human dimension. A contemporary folly in the bracketed context of monumental classicism, the canopy stitches together two vital scales of urban life.

The authors, with Maco Technology srl as main contractor and the University of Nottingham as structural consultant, worked as project managers for the pavilion supporting DS+R from the progressive development of the initial idea to the fabrication and installation of the pavilion. The activity here presented included the refining the preliminary engineering design done by Thornton Tomasetti and the selection of the suppliers.